The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title as well as Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, co-authored with Dr. Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario and Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa.

Episodes

Middle East Report

October 18, 2026 • 8 mins
James discusses on Radio Islam this week’s Middle East developments, including religious ultra-nationalism’s growing influence in the Israeli military, what Israel can learn from NATO’s new strategy, how efforts to destabilise states or change regimes fuel the region’s multiple conflicts, and the Yemen war’s derailing of Saudi sports ambitions.
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How Regime Change Agendas Fuel Middle Eastern Strife

October 16, 2026 • 10 mins
Increasingly, destabilisation, if not regime change, has emerged as the subtext of the Middle East's multiple conflicts. The notion that civil wars, ethnic insurgencies, sectarianism, and social unrest can, at least, weaken hostile adversaries, if not produce more friendly regimes, complicates prospects for negotiated solutions and, in some cases, thwarts diplomacy, heightens the risk of prolonged wars, and turns disputes into exis...
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Is war inevitable

October 14, 2026 • 9 mins
There is much Israel could learn from NATO’s newly enunciated defence strategy. It’s a lesson that could set Israel on a path that doesn’t consider war a permanent fixture of the Jewish state’s existence, doesn’t see ruptures with Israel’s Western allies as inevitable, and could open the door to repairing its shattered international standing and resolving multiple conflicts with the Palestinians,...
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Middle East Report

October 10, 2026 • 7 mins
Iran is restoring one of its nuclear facilities, while at the same timing stepping up attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz – actions that should provoke a US response. They haven’t. The question is why. James discusses the Iranian moves and the lack of a US response on Radio Islam. The discussion with Yusuf, the show’s host, also touches on attempts by Qatar, one of the Gulf states hardest hit by the economic...
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Lessons from Vietnam: Can the US Win the Campaign Against Iran?

October 9, 2026 • 12 mins
Former US State Department official Alan Eyre suggests the US and Iran may be looking to the Vietnam War for lessons. A fluent Farsi speaker who headed the Iran office of the US consulate in Dubai, Mr. Eyre quotes an American colonel telling his Vietnamese counterpart after the Vietnam War ended, “You never defeated us on the battlefield,” to which the Vietnamese responded, “That may be so, but it’s also irr...
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Who Controls the Middle East-Tracking the New Geopolitical World Order?

October 7, 2026 • 29 mins
Eight months into the war between Iran, Israel and the US, the Middle East's old order is being redrawn, while opportunities and pitfalls abound. Geraldine Doogue and Nick Bryant ask Middle East scholar James M. Dorsey how Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are navigating a world where the US is no longer a guaranteed protector, why the Houthis remain a potent force in Yemen, and why Dorsey believes a two-state solution fo...
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Turkey's Horn of Africa Ambitions

October 6, 2026 • 16 mins
The Iran and Yemen wars are fuelling competition in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa with Turkey as a key player. Turkey has long recognised the importance of the region as central to its growing influence in Africa. Even so, the wars and competition have persuaded Turkey that relying on humanitarian diplomacy, development assistance and middle-power strength is no longer enough. As a result, Turkey has rejiggered its approach...
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Middle East Report

October 3, 2026 • 8 mins
This week’s Middle East news offers little reason for optimism. The US withdrawal from Iraq has emboldened Iran and darkened prospects for the Iraqi government and autonomous Kurds in the north. The Israeli Palestinian conflict is becoming ever more intractable as the region hurtles towards an inevitable nuclear arms race. Fuelling the fires, Iran and the United States and Iran are locked into a dialogue of the deaf that thre...
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The Middle East's Coming Nuclear Arms Race

September 29, 2026 • 13 mins
The Middle East is off to a nuclear arms race. It’s an inevitable race resulting from recent US policy, a long-standing Western refusal to call a spade a spade, and indefensible double standards. The Middle Eastern quest for nuclear capabilities isn’t happening in a vacuum. Middle Eastern states, like Saudi Arabia and potentially Turkey, and Iranian hardliners took note of US and European responses to President Vladimi...
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Entrenched US and Iranian strategies make renewed war inevitable

September 27, 2026 • 7 mins
US President Donald Trump’s rejection of Iran’s proposal to conditionally open the Strait of Hormuz is no surprise. In fact, Iran likely expected Mr. Trump to reject it, although the Islamic Republic sweetened the proposal by envisioning a quick return of relatively free navigation through the waterway and an almost immediate negotiation of its nuclear programme. Even so, the proposal served Iran’s purpose.
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Middle East Report

September 26, 2026 • 7 mins
James discusses on Radio Islam the fallout of the US withdrawal from Iraq, the Kurds’ uncertain future, why US Iranian talks at the UN are likely to fail, and tough choices facing Saudi Arabia in Yemen.
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Kurds’ fate hangs in the balance

September 24, 2026 • 10 mins
Kurds, the world’s largest stateless ethnic group, have long been a fixture in US and Israeli machinations to undermine, if not topple, Iran’s Islamist leaders. They still are. Since attacking Iran on February 28, US President Donald Trump and Israeli leaders have played with the idea of encouraging Iranian Kurdish militants operating from bases in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan to open a new front in Iran’s predomina...
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Ethnic strife looms large as Trump’s weighs options in Iran

September 21, 2026 • 12 mins
Arrests of Shiite clerics in Sunni-ruled Shiite-majority Bahrain and the recent assassinations in Iran of Baloch and Kurdish religious figures raise the spectre of the US-Iran war energising ethnic and religious fault lines. The potential fissures threaten to add domestic strife to a conflict that already tears at the fabric of Iranian and Gulf societies.
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Middle East Report

September 12, 2026 • 9 mins
James discusses on Middle East Report recent Middle East developments, including Britain taking a stand against Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, escalation in the Strait of Hormuz, and Yemeni Houthi advances in controlling the strategic Bab al-Mandab waterway.
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UK Prime Minister Burnham leads burgeoning US ally revolt against Trump

September 10, 2026 • 8 mins
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband weren’t just addressing Israel when they this week condemned Israeli policies and banned occupation-related business dealings. Together with ten other European countries and Canada, which have banned or plan to ban West Bank exports, Messrs. Burnham and Miliband were also sending a message to US President Donald Trump. Gone are the days when US allies bend...
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The US-Iran standoff: A battle of wills and resolve

September 7, 2026 • 10 mins
Iran signalled its gradual escalation of US-Iranian hostilities with this weekend’s first attack on US warships rather than oil and commercial shipping in the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The warships foiled the attack by intercepting the incoming projectiles. Even so, the attack moves the goalposts. There is no reason to assume that subsequent attacks will also fail. A successful attack, particularly one that causes US cas...
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Is the Middle East heading for another major conflict

September 3, 2026 • 12 mins
Iran and the United States are barrelling toward a new round of fighting. James discusses the prospects for a wider Middle East war on Money FM 89.3.
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Middle East Report 28082026

August 28, 2026 • 7 mins
James discusses on Radio Islam challenges facing the Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani defence pact, the prospects for success of diplomatic efforts to bring Iran and the United States back to the negotiating table, and the chances of success of US President Donald’s campaign to economically strangle Iran.
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The Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani threat matrix expands exponentially

August 26, 2026 • 16 mins
Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels loomed large when Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan earlier this month inked a mutual defence pact that defines an armed attack on one as an attack on all. The rebels still loom large as Saudi Arabia and the Houthis inch closer to a revival of the Yemen war, but they are not the only ones potentially populating the pact’s threat matrix. So are mounting tensions between Turkey and Is...
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US sanctions campaign will produce mixed results, at best

August 25, 2026 • 9 mins
Scott Bessent’s attempt to ringfence Iran financially and economically will test the United States’ ability to impose its will and Iran’s capability to puncture the Treasury Secretary’s proposed iron wall. Mr. Bessent’s effort will also test the Trump administration’s belief that economic pressure and hardship will spark a popular revolt in Iran that would topple the Iranian regime. With almost f...
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